Richard Flanagan wins Man Booker prize with ‘timeless depiction of war’ | Books | The Guardian Man Booker prize 2014 Richard Flanagan wins Man Booker prize with ‘timeless depiction of war’ Australian novelist picks up award for story of prisoners and captors on Burma railway in The Narrow Road to the Deep North Wednesday 15 October 2014 02.50 EDT First published on Tuesday 14 October 2014 16.48 EDT Close This article is 2 years old The first Man Booker prize to allow American nominees was on Tuesday night won by an Australian, with Richard Flanagan triumphing for a “magnificent novel of love and war” that tells the harrowing stories of prisoners and captors on the Burma railway. Flanagan won for The Narrow Road to the Deep North as he became the third Australian to win the prize, following on from Thomas Keneally and Peter Carey. He instinctively hugged the Duchess of Cornwall as he received the award at a black tie dinner in London. “In Australia the Man Booker prize is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle,” he joked.

“I just didn’t expect to end up the chicken.” The novel is an incredibly personal book for Flanagan, whose father was a survivor of Japan’s campaign to build the railway. He died aged 98 on the day Flanagan emailed his final draft to his publisher. “I grew up, as did my five siblings, as children of the Death Railway,” Flanagan said. “We carried many incommunicable things and I realised at a certain point … that I would have to write this book.” Over 12 years he wrote five drafts that he deemed deficient and burned, but he was intent on finishing before his father died. He stressed that the novel was not his father’s story, although he had asked him lots of questions – “the nature of mud, the smell of rotting shin bone when a tropical ulcer has opened up, what sour rice tasted like for breakfast”.

He added: “In the end my father never asked me what the story was, he trusted me to write a book that might be true.” Flanagan wins £50,000, money he said would be spent on “life”, as he was not wealthy and had even, 18 months ago, considered trying to get work in the mines of northern Australia because he had spent so long on one book. “This prize money means I can continue to be a writer,” said Flanagan, who also worked as one of the screenwriters on Baz Luhrmann’s film Australia. The philosopher AC Grayling, who chaired the judges, called his book “an absolutely superb novel, a really outstanding work of literature”. At its heart, the book tells the excoriating, horrific story of what it was like to be a prisoner of war forced to work on what has become known as the Death Railway between Thailand and Burma. But the novel is about much more than that, said Grayling. “It is not really a war novel, it is not about people shooting one another and bombs going off, it is much more about people, their experience and their relationships.

What’s interesting about it is that it is very nuanced, as if everyone on the Burma railway, both sides of the story, were victims.” It is Flanagan’s sixth novel, and although he was many people’s tip to win, he was not the bookmakers’ favourite. William Hill made him the 6/1 outsider earlier on Tuesday. The favourites had been the three British novelists, Howard Jacobson, Ali Smith and Neel Mukherjee, while the two Americans – Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler – were not given too much of a chance by pundits. Grayling said the process of reading and then re-reading twice exposed “the genuine quality in a book”. He added: “The best and worst of judging books is when you come across one that kicks you so hard you can’t pick up the next one on the pile for a couple of days, it delays you but you know you’ve met something extraordinary. That’s what happened in the case of this book.” The book’s main narrative is set in the second world war but Grayling said it also had a strong contemporary resonance given conflicts around the world.

“With cinema and reporting we are all the more aware of the kind of trauma that people experience when they have been engaged as soldiers or bystanders in these situations,” Grayling said. “This depiction is timeless, it is not just about the second world war, it is about any war and it is about the effect on a human being.” It is the 46th year of the prize but the first one to allow any novel published in English to be entered. The change has not been universally welcomed, with many fearing the award might become dominated by American authors. On Sunday, Flanagan’s countryman Carey (twice a winner, for Oscar & Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang) criticised the move, saying it was “unimaginable” that America’s top literary prizes, such as the Pulitzer, would allow British and Australian authors to be nominated . Carey, who had backed Flanagan to win, believes the “particular cultural flavour” of what was a prize for Commonwealth and Irish writers will now be lost. There is little prospect of the decision being changed and Grayling, on the side of allowing Americans in, said he hoped the debate could now be put to bed.

“Neither the long nor the shortlist was overwhelmed by them [Americans],” he said. Because of the rule changes the judging panel was increased from five to six and Grayling did use his casting vote once in the nearly three-hour judging meeting, but not for final vote, said a Man Booker spokeswoman. The other judges were the academics Jonathan Bate and Sarah Churchwell, the neuroscientist Daniel Glaser, the writer and journalist Erica Wagner and former director of literature at the British Council, Alastair Niven. Flanagan, one of five authors on the shortlist from the Penguin Random House publishing stable, can look forward to a dramatic increase in sales. Jonathan Ruppin, web editor of Foyles, admitted he had been rooting for him. “It’s one of the truly great winners of the prize, one that will be widely read not least because it’s impossible to lay aside completely and forget.” The win be great news for one literary punter who, Ladbrokes revealed last month, visited 13 branches laying bets on Flanagan to win. • This article was amended on 20 October 2014 to correct the title of Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang.

Richard Flanagan says fellow Booker winner Peter Carey is rightly concerned about dangers of change ‘for smaller cultures’ Published: 15 Oct 2014 Man Booker prize winner says he is saddened by the Australian government’s environmental policies and prime minister Tony Abbott’s statement that ‘coal is good for humanity’ Published: 14 Oct 2014 The Narrow Road to the Deep North is truly impressive and allays fears that Commonwealth voices would be edged out Published: 14 Oct 2014 Why love and war belong together, books are better than film, and rubbish bins are a writer’s best friend.

Richard Flanagan, author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, in his own words Published: 15 Oct 2014 Man Booker Prize 2014: Richard Flanagan wins with The Narrow Road to the Deep North | The Independent Man Booker Prize 2014: Richard Flanagan wins with The Narrow Road to the Deep North Feared American takeover fails to materialise Tuesday 14 October 2014 21:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture Richard Flanagan with his winning novel AFP/Getty Richard Flanagan was tonight awarded the Man Booker Prize for a Second World War novel about the Burma Death Railway; a story inspired by his father, who survived the railway but died the day the book was finished. The Australian author won the most acclaimed prize in the British literary calendar for The Narrow Road to the Deep North , a book that “kicked the judges in the chest” and which is dedicated to his father Archie Flanagan, acknowledged as prisoner number 335. Mr Flanagan, 53, hugged The Duchess of Cornwall as she handed him the award and a cheque for £50,000 at the ceremony in London’s Guildhall.

The Tasmanian is acclaimed in his home country, but his profile is set to soar internationally after winning the prize. Review: The Narrow Road To The Deep North He said: “I’m very grateful for this; it’s one of the greatest honours you can be accorded in the world of literature. I didn’t expect it. I was shocked to be on the longlist.” He revealed that the prize-money would allow him to go on writing. After finishing the book last year, he had considered quitting writing to look for work in mining . AC Grayling, chair of the judges, said the “beauty of the writing” made the book stand out and went on to hail its “profoundly intelligent humanity. Some of the passages describing the experience of prisoners of war are excoriating”. Man Booker 2014 shortlist 1/6 Man Booker 2014 shortlist To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris (America). A funny novel, by turns ha-ha, peculiar and, like its hero Paul O'Rourke himself, suspended between heaven and earth. 2/6 Man Booker 2014 shortlist The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Australia).

This novel is based partly on the experiences of the author's father, who was a prisoner of war. 3/6 Man Booker 2014 shortlist We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler (America). In this novel love is the theme, entwined with the family and the notion of “stranger” intrusion. 4/6 Man Booker 2014 shortlist J by Howard Jacobson (Britain). It would be the second win for the novelist, who previously won for The Finkler Question. 5/6 Man Booker 2014 shortlist The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee (Britain). The author has has a taste for violent contrasts and narratives-within-narratives. 6/6 Man Booker 2014 shortlist How to be Both by Ali Smith (Britain). There are two versions of this book, composed of the same words, with the same cover, but with their two main parts interchanged. Mr Flannagan’s sixth book is about the experiences of a fictional surgeon in a Japanese prisoner of war camp on the infamous Thailand-Burma railway. It takes its title from one of the most famous books in Japanese literature, written by poet Basho.

His father spent three and a half years in the camp, where 14,000 died, and Flanagan has said he had known for a long time “this was the book I had to write if I was to carry on writing”. It took 12 years and five versions to complete. It took 12 years and five versions to complete. “Each one was a failure then I realised that my father was growing old and frail and for no logical reason it mattered to me that I finished the book before he died.” He talked to his father on the details “as a way of just being with him”. Shortly before Anzac Day last year, his father, then 98, rang to ask about the book, and was told it was finished. He died later that day. The chairman said the result was a majority decision that took several rounds of voting and took the judges three hours. “The best and worst of judging books is when you come across one so hard in the stomach that you can’t pick up the next one for a couple of days, you know you’ve met something extraordinary,” he said.

“That’s what happened in the case of this one.” Mr Flanagan’s was the only book by a Commonwealth author to make the shortlist, and beat bookies’ favourites Neel Mukherjee, for The Lives of Others and Independent columnist Howard Jacobson’s J. He is the third Australian to win the prize in its 46-year history, after Thomas Kenneally, and Peter Carey who won it twice. Jonathan Ruppin, web editor of Foyle’s Bookshops, called it one of the “truly great winners of the prize, one that will be widely read not least because it's impossible to lay aside completely and forget”. Despite fears, a proposed American invasion failed to materialise in the first year the Booker Prize was opened up to international authors. Previously open to novelists from the UK, the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe, the rules were changed last year to allow any international author writing in English where the book is published in the UK to enter. Two Americans made the shortlist: Karen Joy Fowler for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, and Joshua Ferris for To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. The shortlist was rounded out by Scottish author Ali Smith with How to be Both.

Grayling said the judges’ choice should “put to bed” the American issue: “We didn’t bother about the sex or nationality of the authors.” Last year the prize was won by Eleanor Catton, for The Luminaries, the youngest ever winner at just 28 years old. The 832-page book was also the longest in the prize’s history. Man Booker Prize 2014 Awarded To Richard Flanagan | The Huffington Post Man Booker Prize 2014 Awarded To Richard Flanagan 10/14/2014 05:21 pm ET | Updated Oct 14, 2014 Maddie Crum Culture Writer, The Huffington Post AFP via Getty Images This year's Man Booker Prize has been awarded to Richard Flanagan, author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Born in Tasmania, Flanagan was the only Australian writer to make this year's shortlist. His novel chronicles the experiences of a surgeon who has been imprisoned on the Burma Death Railway, a Japanese war camp during World War II. His sixth book, it's based on his father's true story. Philosopher and Booker chair A.C.

Grayling called it "the sort of book that kicks you so hard in the stomach." This year's shortlist was comprised of six books, including How to be Both by Ali Smith, J by Howard Jacobson, The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. Earlier today, the Guardian predicted that Mukherjee would be the recipient of the $50,000 prize . The shortlist was whittled down from a 13-title longlist; the latter included four Americans, while the former included two. Ferris's title follows a disgruntled dentist around Manhattan, and Fowler's story, a PEN/Faulkner award contender, chronicles an unconventional pair of sisters, and their struggles to communicate. This is the first year that the 46-year-old prize has been open to the authors around the world, so long as their work was originally written in English.

Formerly it was restricted to the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations -- the switch drummed up criticism from British and Commonwealth authors , who question whether the prize would be able to maintain its "flavor." Last year's winner, Eleanor Catton, spoke in favor of the change : "I think it's a really great thing that finally we've got a prize that is an English-language prize that doesn't make a distinction for writers who are writing from a particular country." That the Booker is recently open to Americans, who threaten to trump writers from smaller nations, isn't the only negative feedback its received. This year's longlist only included three women, and excluded Canadian authors altogether . As an alternative, The Guardian has promoted its third annual Not the Booker Prize , for which the winner, Simon Sylvester, received a coffee mug. BBC Arts - BBC Arts - The Man Booker Prize 2014 Read more about sharing. The Man Booker Prize 2014 The 2014 Man Booker Prize has been won by Australian author Richard Flanagan. His wartime novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North took the coveted £50,000 award.

Also shortlisted were Joshua Ferris, Karen Joy Fowler, Howard Jacobson, Neel Mukherjee and Ali Smith. Newsnight culture correspondent Stephen Smith spoke to Flanagan and the other prize nominees. J - Howard Jacobson Set in a future Britain, Howard Jacobson’s ‘J’ has already been compared to some of the all-time great works of dystopian fiction - George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ and Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. The award-winning writer and broadcaster is already a Man Booker prize winner for his 2010 novel The Finkler Question. How to be Both - Ali Smith Ali Smith's novel has caused a stir with its experimental approach. It’s a book of two parts. Two tales of love and injustice - one about a modern-day teenager, the other a 15th Century artist. The publisher released two versions of the novel, with the same stories arranged in a different order. Smith has been on the Booker shortlist twice before for The Accidental in 2005 and Hotel World in 2001.

The Lives of Others - Neel Mukherjee Neel Mukherjee’s second novel follows the fortunes of a middle-class family living in 1960s Calcutta, as India is rocked by revolutionary activity. Domestic upheaval mirrors social unrest in his highly ambitious book. Mukherjee was born in Calcutta in 1970. His debut novel A Life Apart won India’s Crossword Book Award and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler Karen Joy Fowler has received wide acclaim for a novel that is intelligent, funny and heartbreaking. It is a story of family love about Rosemary - an only child whose brother and unique sister vanished from her life. American Fowler has written six novels, and is best known for The Jane Austen Book Club - which spent 13 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan Richard Flanagan’s powerful love story unfolds over half a century between a doctor and his uncle’s wife. The tale was inspired by the Australian PoWs forced to build the Burma Railway in World War 2 – which the author's own father survived.

Flanagan has won numerous awards, including the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Gould's Book of Fish. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour - Joshua Ferris The third novel from Joshua Ferris has been praised as "the Catch-22 of dentistry" by Stephen King. The dark comedy follows a New York dentist, obsessed by religion and technology, who discovers he is being impersonated online. Ferris’s acclaimed first book Then We Came to the End was a finalist for America’s 2007 National Book Award. Richard Flanagan: 'I had so little money after writing Man Booker Prize winner I nearly worked down mine' - Telegraph Booker Prize Richard Flanagan: 'I had so little money after writing Man Booker Prize winner I nearly worked down mine' Australian author Richard Flanagan, who won 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, reveals he was so hard up he considered working in mines By Anita Singh , Arts and Entertainment Editor 7:31AM BST 15 Oct 2014 Follow Richard Flanagan, the 2014 Man Booker Prize winner, was so hard up just a year ago that he considered working down a mine.

The Australian author won the award for his sixth novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North , on Tuesday night. In his acceptance speech, he thanked the judges for choosing him and thanked the sponsors "for the cheque". The prize money is £50,000. Despite his run of acclaimed novels and a screenwriting credit on the Nicole Kidman epic Australia, Flanagan said the writer's life had left him with no money to support his wife and three children. Booker winners often give a flippant answer when asked what they plan to do with the money - Hilary Mantel joked that she would spend hers on "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll" - but Flanagan, 53, was serious. Related Articles Review: Savagery on the Burma death railway 14 Oct 2014 "Do what everyone else does with money: live," he said. "I'm not a wealthy man. In essence, this means I can continue to write. "A year-and-a-half ago when I finished this book, I was contemplating going to get what work I could in the mines in far northern Australia because things had come to such a pass with my writing. I had spent so long on this book.

"There's nothing unusual about that for writers. Writing is a very hard life for so many writers." Flanagan worked on the book for 12 years. It was inspired by his father's harrowing experience as a prisoner of war on the Burma-Thailand "Death Railway" during the Second World War. He wrote five other books on the subject during that time, only to delete them from his hard drive and burn the manuscripts. "A good writer needs a good rubbish bin and I just got a box of matches and struck the match and put it to the paper and that's it," he said. "They were rubbish, they were bad and they didn't work. I don't think I'm much of a writer but I'm a better re-writer." Speaking backstage at London's Guildhall after receiving his award, Flanagan said he felt hopeful about the future of the novel. "Much has been made about the death of the novel and the end of literature as it's seen to be assailed by technology, by the web, by the many and varied new forms of entertainment and culture. I don't share that pessimism because I think it is one of the great inventions of the human spirit.

"So it strikes me not as a dying medium but as an ever more remarkable one." When his name was announced, Flanagan bounded on to the stage at the Guildhall and hugged the Duchess of Cornwall, who was there to present the prize. If it was a breach of protocol, the Duchess did not appear to mind. Asked afterwards about his spontaneous gesture, Flanagan said: "Well, she seemed a sweet woman and she was very nice, and I didn't think to respond in any other way." In his acceptance speech, he said: "I did not come out of a literary tradition. I come from a mining town in the rainforest on an island at the end of the world. "My grandparents were illiterate and I never expected to stand before you in this great hall in London as a writer being so honoured. "In Australia, the Man Booker Prize is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle. I just didn't expect to end up with the chicken." Last month, Flanagan was briefly the bookmakers' favourite after a mystery man visited 13 betting shops in and around Darlington, County Durham, and placed the maximum bet on Flanagan to win. Ladbrokes said he had won several thousand pounds.

A spokesman said: "We never had Darlington down as a literary betting hotspot." Man Booker Prize: Richard Flanagan wins for wartime love story - BBC News BBC News Man Booker Prize: Richard Flanagan wins for wartime love story By Tim Masters Arts and entertainment correspondent, BBC News 15 October 2014 Close share panel Media captionRichard Flanagan: ''It was a book I couldn't escape writing'' Australian author Richard Flanagan has won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for his wartime novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. AC Grayling, chair of the judges, said it was a "remarkable love story as well as a story about human suffering and comradeship". Flanagan's novel is set during the construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in World War Two. It was announced as the winner on Tuesday at London's Guildhall. Flanagan, 53, was presented with his prize by The Duchess of Cornwall. Media captionRichard Flanagan: ''I never expected to stand here before you in this grand hall in London as a writer, being so honoured'' "In Australia the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle," Flanagan said.

"I just didn't expect to end up the chicken." The book was inspired by the author's father, a Japanese prisoner of war who survived the Death Railway, but died aged 98 on the day the novel was finished. The railway between Bangkok in Thailand and Rangoon in Burma was built by Japan in 1943 to support its forces, using forced labour. More than 100,000 people died during its construction. 'Truth in detail' "The battle was to write something that wasn't [my father's] story but, at the same time, true to the fundamental spiritual truth of his experience," Flanagan told the BBC. "He trusted me, he never asked me what the story was. But I did talk to him often about very small things. "What the mud was like, what the smell of a rotting tropical ulcer that had eaten through to the shin bone exactly was. What a tiny ball of sour rice would taste like when you're starving, what starvation felt like in your belly and your brain.

"It was those things I talked to him about because I think truth exists in those small but very real physical details." Image copyright AP Image caption Man Booker shortlisted authors (l-r): Ali Smith, Neel Mukherjee, Howard Jacobson, Karen Joy Fowler, Richard Flanagan and Joshua Ferris Grayling said the judges reached a majority decision after three hours of debate. "The two great themes from the origin of literature are love and war: this is a magnificent novel of love and war," he said. "Written in prose of extraordinary elegance and force, it bridges East and West, past and present, with a story of guilt and heroism." The Narrow Road to the Deep North is Tasmania-born Flanagan's sixth novel and it took 12 years to complete. The story is set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp and centres upon the experiences of surgeon Dorrigo Evans, who is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Image copyright Chatto and Windus RICHARD FLANAGAN - AT A GLANCE Born in Tasmania in July 1961.

Flanagan's previous novels - Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould's Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist and Wanting - have been published in 26 countries. He directed a feature film version of The Sound Of One Hand Clapping (1998), which starred Kerry Fox. He also co-wrote the screenplay for Baz Luhrmann's 2008 film Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The book is dedicated "to prisoner san byaku san ju go" - a reference to his father's Japanese prison number, 335. Catherine Taylor, reviewing the book for The Telegraph , said: "Flanagan's writing courses like a river, sometimes black with mud, sludge and corpses, sometimes bright with moonlight." Carl Wilkinson, in the Financial Times , called it "elegantly wrought, measured and without an ounce of melodrama". The Narrow Road to the Deep North had been the bookmakers' second favourite after Neel Mukherjee's The Lives Of Others, a sweeping account of life in 1960s Calcutta.

Also on the shortlist were authors Joshua Ferris, Karen Joy Fowler, Howard Jacobson and Ali Smith. 'Kick in the stomach' Grayling said: "The best and worst of judging books is when you come across one that kicks you so hard in the stomach like this that you can't pick up the next one in the pile for a couple of days. That's what happened in the case of this book." This was the first year that the Man Booker Prize had been open to all authors writing in English, regardless of nationality. Some writers had expressed fears that the change in the rules could lead to dominance by US authors. The shortlist consisted of two American writers, three British and one Australian. "There is a very powerful cohort of contemporary American writers, but neither the longlist nor the shortlist was overwhelmed by them," said Grayling. Last year, the Booker was won by New Zealand's Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries. At 28, she was the youngest ever winner.

Man Booker Prize shortlist 2014 Author Booker Prize 2014: the longlist - Telegraph Booker Prize Booker Prize 2014: the longlist The longlist for the 2014 Man Booker Prize has been revealed, including novels by David Mitchell, David Nicholls and Joshua Ferris. Here's what you need to know about them Four of the Booker longlisted authors, clockwise from top left: David Mitchell; Siri Hustvedt; David Nicholls; Ali Smith Photo: Geoff Pugh; Dan Callister / Rex Features; Clara Molden; Sipa Press / Rex Features By Telegraph Reporters To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (Viking) by Joshua Ferris (American) We said: "Paul O’Rourke is a dentist, insomniac and baseball obsessive, but, above all, he is an anxious atheist in search of meaning. He is Portnoy as prosthodontist, with the defeated outlook of Mark from Peep Show. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is Ferris's third novel and the first to be unfettered by excessive hype or the inevitable backlash.

And whatever reservations you might have about the overall shape of the thing, or how its various set pieces are stitched together, you cannot deny that this is a genuinely funny book." The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Chatto & Windus) by Richard Flanagan (Australian) We said: "The exquisite haiku of the Japanese Edo-period poet Basho might seem an unusual touchstone in a novel about savagery and survival on the Burma death railway, which was constructed by prisoners-of-war and Asian slave labour in 1943. Yet Basho’s crystalline brevity gives Richard Flanagan’s novel not only its title but also its grace and unfathomability." Related Articles We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Serpent's Tail) by Karen Joy Fowler (American) They said: "In modern times, literary fiction presents a conundrum: The more craftily constructed its suspense, the more it tempts its advocates — in the interest of airtime — to reach into a serious tale and pull out something resembling a tabloid headline.

Such as: “Girl and Chimp Twinned at Birth in Psychological Experiment.” That’s the big reveal in Karen Joy Fowler’s “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” a novel so readably juicy and surreptitiously smart, it deserves all the attention it can get." (Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times) The Blazing World (Sceptre) by Siri Hustvedt (American) We said: "The Blazing World, picking up on themes explored in an earlier Hustvedt novel, What I Loved, is more than just the story of a life. It is a sophisticated commentary on celebrity, myth-making, sexism in the art world and the human craving for understanding." J (Jonathan Cape) by Howard Jacobson (British) Not yet published.

The publisher says: "Set in the future, a world where the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about of visited, J is a love story of incomparable strangeness, both tender and terrifying." The Wake (Unbound) by Paul Kingsnorth (British) They said: "As The Wake's first-person narrator revisits the trauma of an invasion by "ingenga" (foreigners) that changed our islands for ever (and mostly for the worse), we leave history on the desk and wade through muddy experience by dint of our exercised imaginations. Hastings might have gone the other way, but it didn't, and for three centuries the elite talked another language. Kingsnorth is a green activist, author of an attack on corporate control and blandness called Real England, and his first novel has a fierceness about it that gives it real heft." (Adam Thorpe, The Guardian) The Bone Clocks (Sceptre) by David Mitchell (British) Not yet published. The publisher says: "One drowsy summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for 'asylum'.

Decades will pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of asylum the woman was seeking. Metaphysical thriller, meditation on mortality and chronicle of our self-devouring times, this kaleidoscopic novel crackles with invention and wit." The Lives of Others (Chatto & Windus) by Neel Mukherjee (British) We said: "Neel Mukherjee’s masterful second novel begins in 1966 with a harrowing account of impoverished wage labourer Nitai Das, unable to feed his starving wife and children, killing them in a horrific burst of violence before committing suicide. This intimate atrocity, born of deprivation and acute despair, is juxtaposed with the comparatively petty concerns of the bourgeois Ghosh family, making a profound point about struggles for equality in the world’s largest democracy during the long aftermath of empire." Us (Hodder & Stoughton) by David Nicholls (British) Not yet published. The publisher says: "David Nicholls brings to bear all the wit and intelligence that graced One Day in this brilliant, bittersweet new book, which will delight his fans and bring him many new readers.

A novel about love and family, husbands and wives, parents and children, its publication will undoubtedly be one of the major events in the world of books in 2014." The Dog (Fourth Estate) by Joseph O'Neill (Irish/American) Not yet published. The publisher says: "In 2007, a New York attorney bumps into an old college buddy - and accepts his friend's offer of a job in Dubai, as the overseer of an enormous family fortune. Haunted by the collapse of his relationship, our strange hero begins to suspect that he has exchanged one inferno for another." Orfeo (Atlantic Books) by Richard Powers (American) We said: "Orfeo opens with Peter Els, a 70-year-old composer, calling 911 in a moment of panic when his dog starts haemorrhaging. The police show up and discover Els, the dead dog and, in a back room, an improvised lab replete with beakers, Petri dishes and a compound microscope that looks “like an infant Imperial Stormtrooper”. On his wall is a 16th-century print of Arabic music. To the cops, this is not a felicitous counterpoint...

The critical cliché is that Powers is all head and no heart. That is certainly not true of Orfeo." How to be Both (Hamish Hamilton) by Ali Smith (British) Not yet published. The publisher says: "How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real." History of the Rain (Bloomsbury) by Niall Williams (Irish) They said: "This is a book about rain. It is also about rivers; and about salmon and families and love and poetry. Or maybe it is about Impossible Aspirations, complete with capital letters. Move over, Flann O'Brien; you have been sitting on your own for far too long.

Here is a fellow Dubliner exiled to the country, living in a place called Kiltumper.It is unfair to other novelists that they have to compete against writing of this quality." (Peter Pierce, Sydney Morning Herald) The Booker shortlist will be announced on September 9, and the prize will be awarded at a ceremony on October 14 Man Booker Prize: Howard Jacobson makes shortlist - BBC News BBC News Man Booker Prize: Howard Jacobson makes shortlist 9 September 2014 Image copyright Man Booker Image caption The books were whittled down from a longlist of 13 Former Booker winner Howard Jacobson is among the three British writers, two Americans and an Australian to make this year's shortlist. The other writers are Neel Mukherjee, Ali Smith, Joshua Ferris, Karen Joy Fowler and Richard Flanagan. It is the first year the prize has included US writers, having previously included those from the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on 14 October. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.

Man Booker Prize shortlist 2014 Author To Rise Again at a Decent Hour American The Narrow Road to the Deep North Australian We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves American How to be Both British AC Grayling, the chair of the judges, said they "just chose the books which were the best", adding "there was no question of tokenism". "As the Man Booker Prize expands its borders, these six exceptional books take the reader on journeys around the world, between the UK, New York, Thailand, Italy, Calcutta and times past, present and future," he said. Image copyright PA Image caption Jacobson previously won the Booker in 2010 Judge Sarah Churchwell said the books carried modern themes, adding: "These novels are very engaged with the contemporary world. "It is striking when we look at the books selected in the recent past how strong historical fiction was. Although we got many wonderful historical novels we felt with these six, that there were some very interesting books here about the 20th and 21st Century." She later added that Smith's novel does feature the Renaissance era, but from a modern perspective.

Previous winners of the prize have included Hilary Mantel, whose 2012 winner Bringing up the Bodies, was about Thomas Cromwell, an adviser to King Henry VIII, and charted the bloody downfall of Anne Boleyn. It was the sequel to Wolf Hall, which won the prize in 2009. Analysis - Rebecca Jones, BBC Arts Correspondent The judges say they were interested only in the quality of the writing, but in the end they have come up with a shortlist that ticks all the boxes. Neat and tidy, some might even say rather safe. Two women make the final six. And fears the prize would be swamped by American writers have proved unfounded. Only two authors from the United States make the final list. Joshua Ferris, whose book was dubbed "The Catch-22 of dentistry" by Stephen King and Karen Joy Fowler's family saga which has already won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In recent years historical fiction has dominated the prize, so it is notable that this year the books are set in the future, present or recent past. Art, war and the internet emerge as key subjects.

But traditional themes are still at the forefront: love and grief, ambition and desire and the strangeness of the ordinary. The judges said it was "really difficult" to come up with the shortlist. They say that every year. But it did take them three hours and 40 minutes to reach a decision, which is longer than usual. I suspect some books passed smoothly from longlist to shortlist, but others were argued over far more vociferously. Jacobson, who won in 2010, is nominated for his futuristic love story J. It features two main characters who inhabit a world where the past is not spoken about and is shrouded in suspicion, referred to as "What Happened, If It Happened". His previous win was for his comic novel The Finkler Question, beating contenders including double winner Peter Carey. Ferris's third novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, looks at atheism through the eyes of a dentist, who spends the day looking at death and decay but cannot find solace in religion. Australia's Flanagan was the only non-British representative of the Commonwealth on the longlist.

He is nominated for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a haunting account of the Australian servicemen who, as Japanese prisoners of war, were forced to build the so-called Burma railway. Image copyright Handout Image caption The judges are (standing L-R) Alastair Niven, Daniel Glaser, chair AC Grayling, Erica Wagner and (seated L-R) Sarah Churchwell and Jonathan Bate The author wrote the book in tribute to his late father who survived the experience - but thousands more did not. Considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation, his other works include The Sound of One Hand Clapping and he also co-wrote the script for the Baz Luhrmann film, Australia. Fowler, who is best known for her light-hearted novel The Jane Austen Book Club, is nominated for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, about an ordinary Mid-western family: two parents and three children - one of whom turns out to be surprisingly special. Mukherjee's The Lives of Others begins in Calcutta in 1967, and reveals the stark contrast between the lives of two Bengali families - one wealthy and the other in poverty.

The political activism of the era provides a backdrop to his portrayal of the chaos of family life. Smith was one of only three women on the 13-strong longlist for her inventive new novel, How To Be Both. She has been shortlisted twice before, with 2005's The Accidental and Hotel World in 2001. Her book, How to be Both, tells two interlinking stories, one about a renaissance artist in 15th Century Italy, the other about a child of the 1960s - and the reader can decide which half to read first. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Eleanor Catton was the youngest-ever winner of the Booker last year, for The Luminaries This year marks the 46th year of the prize. Grayling's fellow judges are Churchwell, Jonathan Bate, Daniel Glaser, Alastair Niven and Erica Wagner. Their task now is to re-read the six novels in order to choose the winner. So far the betting odds are being led by the British writers.

Ladbrokes has Mukherjee in the lead with 2/1, followed by Smith on at 3/1, Jacobson at 4/1, Flanagan at 5/1, Fowler at 6/1 and Ferris on at 12/1. William Hill has Howard Jacobson and Ali Smith both leading with way at 3/1, followed by Mukherjee at 4/1, Joshua Ferris at 5/1 and Flanagan at 6/1. Last year, the Booker was won by New Zealand's Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries. At 28, she was the youngest-ever winner and said her life had been changed by the award. "I've been given opportunities to travel and to see my book read by such an astonishingly wide readership all over the world," she said. This year's ceremony will be broadcast by the BBC.

Question: Whose book The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ won the Man Booker Prize of 2014?
Answer: Richard Flanagan